1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the field of speech recognition software and more particularly to a system for eliminating mis-recognitions of spoken words resulting from randomly occurring background noises in an acoustic environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years software developers have devised various application programs to enable computers to recognize spoken words in various languages. A common problem when using such voice recognition software in a home or office setting is mis-recognitions of spoken words when randomly occurring background noises occur. As used herein, the phrase "randomly occurring background noise" refers to those noises which are random with respect to their occurency in an acoustic environment such as an office. Examples of randomly occurring background noises include telephone ringers, file drawers opening and closing, sneezing, coughing, breathing noises and the like. These randomly occurring noises are to be distinguished from those noises which are merely random in their noise characteristics, such as white noise. In any case, the problem of randomly occurring noises is particularly acute when the user has a far field microphone.
Conventional speech recognition software applications do not distinguish or respond appropriately to randomly occurring noises. Thus, speech recognition systems using far-field desktop or monitor microphones that do not have noise-canceling capability tend to have low recognition accuracy because they cannot distinguish between randomly occurring environmental noise and speech. Conversely, near field microphones, such as those used in headsets, are less prone to problems arising from randomly occurring environmental noise. However, such microphones are more prone to reception of randomly occurring noise in the form of inadvertent personal noises, such as breathing, coughing or sneezing. Accordingly, there exists a need for voice recognition systems to have a more sophisticated ability to intelligently handle randomly occurring noises including environmental noises and personal noises.